The Army that Never Was: The Unrealistic 1936 Kwantung Army Plan for an Inner Mongolian Army

Abstract

Between 1932 and 1945 the Japanese military raised a number of ‘puppet’ armies. While research has focused on the motives of those who opted to collaborate with the Japanese during the period, little work has been done regarding the composition of these forces. The article examines the Kwantung Army's January 1936 plans for an Inner Mongolian Army, and the reasons why this ‘army’ never eventuated in the form that had been planned. This sheds light on how officers of the Kwantung Army understood, and misunderstood, the potential of peoples of North China to become useful collaborators in wresting the region from the Nationalist Chinese control.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Narrelle Morris, Philip Jowett and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

Notes

1 ¹See Hayashi, Kōgun, 8 for growth of the Kwantung Army between 1931 and 1935.

2 ²Lebra, Japanese-Trained Armies; Lebra, Indian National Army; Boyle, China and Japan at War.

3 ³For example, Jowett, Rays of the Rising Sun; Rottman, Japanese Infantryman; Fujita, Mō hitotsu no rikugun heikishi.

4 ⁴Kawakami, Manchoukuo: Child of Conflict, 205–210; Cutlack, Manchurian Arena, 19–20.

5 ⁵Zenrin kyōkai, Mōko nenkan, 258–259; Nakajima, Toku-ō, 149.

6 ⁶See Manchoukuo Army and Navy; Jowett, Rays of the Rising Sun, 15.

7 ⁷Boyd, Japanese-Mongolian Relations, 152–153, 175–176.

8 ⁸Boyle, China and Japan at War, 124–125; Boorman, Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, 7–9.

9 ⁹Telegram from Peking, reel 46, frame 77-8.

10 ¹⁰Constant, ‘Comments on Current Events’, reel 2, frame 389.

11 ¹¹Kantōgun, ‘Tai-Mō (seihoku) shisaku yōryō’. This report is handwritten and the pages then folded and bound, with the same page number on both sides of the page – ‘a’ refers to the obverse of the page, and ‘b’ to the reverse.

12 ¹²Ibid., 1a.

13 ¹³Ibid., 1b, 4a-4b, 9a. For discussion of the Zenrin Kyōkai, see Boyd, ‘Japanese Cultural Diplomacy in Action’.

14 ¹⁴Iiyama and Hazama, Mōkyō no tabi, 49.

15 ¹⁵See, for example, ‘Mōkokoku kensetsu ni kansuru iken’; Kantōgun, ‘Nekkashō yori mitaru Mōko minzoku ni tsuite’; Matsumuro report; Kantōgun, ‘Tai-Naimō shisaku yōryō’.

16 ¹⁶Kantōgun, ‘Tai-Mō (seihoku) shisaku yōryō’, 6b-7b.

17 ¹⁷Nakanishi, Nihon no hohei kaki, 26–27.

18 ¹⁸United States War Department, Handbook on Japanese Military Forces, 44.

19 ¹⁹Kantōgun, ‘Tai-Mō (seihoku) shisaku yōryō’, 7b.

20 ²⁰Patrikeeff, Russian Politics in Exile, 144.

21 ²¹‘Genzai ni okeru Semenofu shitai henseihyō’.

22 ²²Boyd, Japanese-Mongolian Relations, 11.

23 ²³Boyd, ‘Horse Power’.

24 ²⁴Turnbull, Mongol Warrior, 16–17, 27.

25 ²⁵‘Mongol Cavalrymen’, Japan Chronicle, 361.

26 ²⁶See photos in Jowett, Chinese Warlord Armies, 20.

27 ²⁷Jowett, Rays of the Rising Sun, 51.

28 ²⁸Jowett, Chinese Warlord Armies, 20.

29 ²⁹ Sensen niman kiro.

30 ³⁰United States War Department, Handbook on Japanese Military Forces, 217.

31 ³¹Jowett, Rays of the Rising Sun, 17.

32 ³²‘Chinese Forces Capture Pailingmiao’, China Weekly Review, 443.

33 ³³Matsui, Naimō sangokushi, 158.

34 ³⁴Tomczyk, Japońska Broń Pancerna, 60–64.

35 ³⁵Boyd, ‘In Pursuit of an Obsession’, 297–298.

36 ³⁶Constant, ‘Relationship between the Mother Country and its Dependencies’, 378.

37 ³⁷Boyd, ‘In Pursuit of an Obsession’, 297–298.

38 ³⁸Funaki, Mōjin, 165.

39 ³⁹Coble, Facing Japan, 325–333; Coox, Nomonhan, 69–73.

40 ⁴⁰See, for example, the articles ‘Mongol Cavalry Driven Back’, ‘Mongol Forces Mutiny’, and ‘Kwantung Army Ready’.

41 ⁴¹Upshur, ‘Chang Hsueh-liang’, 44–55.

42 ⁴²Kawabe, ‘Ichigaya yori Ichigaya e 3/7’, 183–184.

43 ⁴³Boyd, Japanese-Mongolian Relations, 154-5.

44 ⁴⁴Holland, ‘Death that Saved Europe’, 99.

45 ⁴⁵Jagchid, Last Mongol Prince, 10–11.

46 ⁴⁶‘Zenrin kyōkai nenpyō’, 412.

47 ⁴⁷Stilwell, ‘Situation Report’, 404.

48 ⁴⁸United States War Department, Handbook on Japanese Military Forces, 38.

49 ⁴⁹Rottman, Japanese Infantryman, 9–10.

50 ⁵⁰Bulag, Mongols at China's Edge, 108.

51 ⁵¹Coox, Nomonhan, 167.

52 ⁵²Wu, A Legal Study, 38; Nish, ‘Japanese Military Intelligence’, 24.

53 ⁵³Lovell, The Great Wall, 310; Coox, Nomonhan, 67.

54 ⁵⁴Coble, Facing Japan, 94; Skya, ‘German Nazi and Japanese Shintō Ultranationalists’, 139.

55 ⁵⁵Constant, ‘Relationship between the Mother Country and its Dependencies’, 378; Bisson, Japan in China, 108.

56 ⁵⁶Lary, Warlord Soldiers, 83–85.

57 ⁵⁷Wilson, The Manchurian Crisis, 143.

58 ⁵⁸Johnson, The Japanese through American Eyes, 19.